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Spam King and Family Dead In Murder-Suicide

Posted by kdawson on Fri Jul 25, 2008 08:05 AM
from the coming-to-a-bad-end dept.
Spam News
Lt.Hawkins was one of many readers sending in word that the escaped spam king discussed yesterday was found dead in Colorado, after apparently killing his wife and 3-year-old daughter. A teenager was injured, and an infant was found alive in the car.
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story

Related Stories

[+] Spam King Escapes From Federal Prison 596 comments
Bobfrankly1 writes "The FBI, IRS, and the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force are helping the US Marshals search for escaped 'Spam King' Edward 'Eddie' Davidson. He apparently jumped in a car with his wife, changed clothes at home, and hasn't been seen since." Update: 07/24 22:20 GMT by T : It seems that Davidson has been found, victim of a murder-suicide which also left two others dead.
Submission: Spam king and family dead in murder-suicide by Lt.Hawkins (17467)
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  • I can't believe someone would be so upset over being institutionalized (for their own actions, no less!) that they'd feel the need to kill their family as well as themselves.

    What a sad state of affairs.
    • Psychologically speaking, the very act of going to prison(even if its minimum security)can be highly damaging. There is no telling what caused this guy to snap but its likely that he didn't sit there and stew about it and decide to do it on his own. It was likely a snap decision brought on by q pretty high amount of stress and depression.

      Not justifying it, just stating that its not so cut and dry as a simple choice to kill your family.
      • if only he had used canadian antidepressants! I am sure I could find the mail somewhere which had extremely good rates from a company called International Pharmacy.

      • Re:I understand running away from prison... but (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2008, @08:40AM (#24333827)

        There is no telling what caused this guy to snap but its likely that he didn't sit there and stew about it and decide to do it on his own.

        If he was still alive and having to defend himself in court, he'd probably plead temporary insanity.

        Insanity means without reason or utterly foolish. Something must have really snapped in his head, put him on another plane of consciousness.

        That's all I can think of. I can't believe a father would really kill his innocent little child. I want to believe that he would not have done so in even a remotely reasonable state of mind. He must have really lost it.

        My condolences to those affected. :(

      • Re:I understand running away from prison... but (Score:5, Insightful)

        by b0ttle (1332811) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:43AM (#24333857)
        It's so easy to criticize behind computer screen. No one knows what he's been through. Nothing justifies the killing of his wife (maybe she agreed?) and daughter (this one has no maybes), but we just don't know what really happened, and never will. So I prefer not to judge.
      • It isn't just prison, but institutionalization in general.

        Once upon a time, I was put into a "mental health facility" (loony bin) after a drawn out period where I started seeing spiders coming at me in all directions (an extreme phobia of mine). Today, we have found out that this condition only emerges when I don't sleep at least 6 hours a night, and stress contriubutes largely to my ability to sleep. Well, about a day into this place, I was literally going nuts. They had TVs, but you weren't allowed to watch them... ever. The only game they had was a deck of cards... with 35 cards. They took away your shoes and most common clothing, where most of us had to wear a hospital gown... the place was at a constant 60 degrees F. There was one hallway... 84 steps from end to end. The only thing to do there was drink coffee and smoke. I never did either before I went there, but when the coffee cart came out, you grabbed one. There was nothing else to do. When smoke break came along, you smoked one. There was nothing else to do.

        I started coming up with games to play with myself around the place to try and keep what sanity I had left. I got locked into solitary for playing "Die Hard" and being too "loud and obnoxious, which stirs up the other patients" I was told. The first visitation from my wife I was allowed to have, I had her get a lawyer and get me the hell out of there.

        • I spent a week in a loony bin myself once. We had the same problem with the cards. Apparently nobody in there ever played with a full deck...(wait for it)...

          • I was not self-admitted, else I could have signed an AMA (Against Medical Advice) waiver and gotten out. I had been working 16+ hour days at work for a month and I was cracking hard. I was actually doing a paid research study for people with psychosis, and I was doing a test in an MRI machine. The spiders started coming out of every crack and I couldn't move, obviously. I couldn't help but panic and I trashed and screamed, everything I could do to get out of there away from the spiders/ They had me admitted because I was "a probable danger to myself and others".

            I also have to add this little bit, because it is hard for people to comprehend situations like this if they never have experienced it... When you have a psychotic episode, you can not tell it isn't real. You can even try and reason with yourself that "This can't possibly be happening", but ultimately, every other part of your brain is telling you it is.

    • Re:I understand running away from prison... but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShadowsHawk (916454) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:14AM (#24333303)

      It takes someone with a minor god complex. "I'm the only thing that matters to my family, so they're better off dead." I know some people here will celebrate the spammers death, but I would have rather seen him in a 8x10 cell.

      • Re:I understand running away from prison... but (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jank1887 (815982) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:34AM (#24333685)

        Optimum: 8x10 cell, family alive. Not as good, but tolerable: dead by his own hand, family alive. Absolutely horrible: him dead with wife and his 3 year old child.

        As a father of 3, I cannot fathom what drives a person to do that to their own child. An adult can create conflict that may drive you to retaliate. A 3 year old cannot.

        • I think the whole killing of his wife is a bit over the top and goes to show how he truly was a monster with no morals. He could have just killed himself and done us all a favor. Now he's hated even more, which is going some.
          • Personally, I think the whole thing stinks. Who goes to all the trouble to escape jail so they can kill themselves when they succeed? It's not like there isn't a long list of people with motive to kill him and tidy up the witnesses. If the teenage girl was shot but escaped and is coherent enough to talk, why do the authorities talk about the "apparent" gunman? That seems to me the sort of language you use when all you have is circumstantial evidence.

    • How do we know someone else didn't do it and then make it look like a murder/suicide?

      That was my first thought when I saw the headline.

  • beware (Score:5, Funny)

    by appleLaserWriter (91994) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:07AM (#24333167)

    spam kills

  • This quote says it all (Score:5, Informative)

    by iamhigh (1252742) * on Friday July 25 2008, @08:07AM (#24333179)
    "What a nightmare, and such a coward," U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said. "Davidson imposed the 'death penalty' on family members for his own crime."

      • The guy was in a minimum security farm prison, if you ask me it had a lot more to do with social rehab than vengeance. The guy wasn't going to be able to access an uncontrolled computer in the two years he was there, if they wanted vengeance they may have sent him to a maximum security prison for longer than two years.

        • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Informative)

          by LordKaT (619540) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:34AM (#24333695) Homepage Journal

          Have you ever been in the "farm system" (as you so daintily put it)? Let me tell you what life is like behind the bars at the "farm system":

          Dorm living with fully grown men. These "dorms" are sometimes the size of a gymnasium. A gymnasium full of grown men. Fully grown, under enormous stress, living in close quarters. Honestly, you'd have much less stress living in a car.

          2 minute showers, enforced.

          Scheduled bathroom times. Gotta shit? Hold it until shit time, which is usually at the start of the day and the end.

          Forced labor. They don't even bother matching you up with work from your skillset. Too fat? Go work in the yard. Too stupid to know how to kill someone with a knife? Kitchen work.

          This "farm system" isn't about rehabilitation, it's about "serving your time" and getting the fuck out.

          That's not rehabilitation, it's life structure enforcement. Rehab means breaking a person down into their individual pieces, examining all of those pieces, finding out what's wrong, and then learning to live life with the knowledge that you have a problem.

          • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Interesting)

            by tb()ne (625102) on Friday July 25 2008, @09:29AM (#24334687)

            2 minute showers?!? Living in dorms?!? Waiting to shit?!? That's outrageous!

            Or maybe that's why it's called punishment - it's not supposed to be pleasant. I won't defend the deplorable conditions in PMITA federal prisons or deny that they're just making bad people worse or deny that they make no significant effort to reintegrate prisoner with law-abiding society. But you haven't convinced me that there's anything deplorable going on in the "farm system." Most of your description sounds like boot camp in the military

            That's not rehabilitation, it's life structure enforcement. Rehab means breaking a person down into their individual pieces, examining all of those pieces, finding out what's wrong, and then learning to live life with the knowledge that you have a problem.

            Oh, so we should have just turned him over to the Scientologists?

            The "problem" that a lot of these people have is simply that they are criminals and they will happily break the law if they think they can get away with it, not that they have some psychological problem that will be cured by counseling or psychotherapy. And fear of consequences is more of a deterrent than realizing you didn't get enough attention from mommy. I would be interested to see some statistics on repeat offenses for white collar criminals who spend time in Club Fed, as opposed to those who spend time in PMITA federal prison.

          • Have you ever been in the army? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Moraelin (679338) on Friday July 25 2008, @09:42AM (#24334977) Journal

            Well, there may be more than you wrote there, I wouldn't know, never been to jail. But what you do write, is no worse than army life anywhere in the world. And some even use conscription to inflict it on almost every male. Not that I defend conscription or anything, but it's not living hell either.

            Dorm living with fully grown men. These "dorms" are sometimes the size of a gymnasium. A gymnasium full of grown men. Fully grown, under enormous stress, living in close quarters. Honestly, you'd have much less stress living in a car.

            A lot of barracks out there pack a lot of grown men in a large confined space. Maybe not gym sized, but nevertheless. And they're under stress. Tough shit, learn to cope.

            Frankly, I'm not exactly an extrovert myself, but I really don't get the "OMG, it's a big place with lots of men" mentality. So was the army, so is the office, etc. Most of human history happened that way. Whether you'd be packed with a lot of agricultural workers in little more than a big barn, or packed in a small house together with your extended family, or as a soldier in a longship/tent/barrack with at _least_ 8 or 10 members of your squad/decuria/watchamacallit. Go back to prehistory, and you'd be sleep with a lot of men, women and children in the confined space of a cave. It may seem like the end of the world if you spend your life in a basement trying to avoid contact with other humans, but it's not. Most humans are actually made to be social people. Being in a crowd won't kill you.

            2 minute showers, enforced.

            Well, the navy manages to live on even more inconvenient showers, to conserve water. It's giving up a bit of comfort, no doubt, but it's not the end of the world.

            Scheduled bathroom times. Gotta shit? Hold it until shit time, which is usually at the start of the day and the end.

            Ever pulled guard duty in the army? You're supposed to stand there and not desert your post until your time is up. This also means you can't go to the bathroom whenever you wish.

            Forced labor. They don't even bother matching you up with work from your skillset. Too fat? Go work in the yard. Too stupid to know how to kill someone with a knife? Kitchen work.

            Well, tough shit, sherlock. Noone asked me if my aspirations or skill set were perfectly matched to running with an assault rifle up hill, or operating a big loud AA gun. Nor if, say, cleaning the floor is against my religion.

            Plus, that's the story of most people's lives even outside prison. You're rarely in a position to get your ideal dream job, or most people's work day would consist of getting blowjobs and surfing for porn. Instead most people get what's available. The guy behind the counter at the gas station or the one frying your burgers at McDonalds also aren't really paired to the best match for their aspirations and skills.

            And again, if you look at human history, it used to be even worse.

            Basically, I don't know. If you'd be telling me that there's something inherently humiliating or inhuman about the work they're asked to do, ok, I might even show some sympathy. But, basically, OMG, they're like Army Lite, with actually less stress and effort than the real Army... heh... dunno, fails to move me much.

        • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2008, @08:18AM (#24333369)

          Pretty much. Seriously, the US prison system breeds criminals - if you're not one going in, you sure as hell will be coming out.

            • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Hyppy (74366) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:29AM (#24333589)
              You can't seriously believe that everyone sent to prison is a criminal, can you?

                • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Interesting)

                  by tsstahl (812393) on Friday July 25 2008, @09:15AM (#24334431)

                  As in 100%? Of course not. But I think "innocent man sent to jail" is very, very rare.

                  Now

                  How about a 10% error rate? Gov. Ryan commuted the sentences of all Illinois death row inmates after DNA testing exonerated ten percent of them.

                  Personally, I don't consider a ten percent error rate on death sentences 'rare'.

                  I'm also willing to bet that you are not an American black male of average build and average height living within 5 blocks of a Martin Luther King Drive.

                  In my experience, the more heinous the act, the more desire exists for SOMEBODY to pay for it, the higher likelihood of someone being made the fall guy.

                • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Insightful)

                  by PunkOfLinux (870955) <mewshi@mewshi.com> on Friday July 25 2008, @08:56AM (#24334073) Homepage

                  That wasn't the point. Studies have *shown* that the prison environment is actually *more* destructive to the rehabilitation of criminals. Rather than focus on incapacitation, we should be focusing on rehabilitation, which, dollar for dollar, has a *much* higher rate of return than prison. I'm not saying we should keep murderers out of prison, but unarmed robbery? Please, just help the people actually survive, or, if they do it for the 'thrill' help them with that. It works something like 30% better than prison.

        • Re:This quote says it all (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2008, @08:23AM (#24333473)

          That's right - the US penal system killed that little girl and her mother.

          Asshole.

          You can throw all the pejoratives you want, the fact remains that the US penal system does an excellent job of making petty criminals into hardened criminals. Never mind issues like prison rape. This guy may have been serving in a minimum security facility but he US penal contains a number of penal facilities that are such hell-holes that being sent there could be construed as cruel and unusual punishment.

  • A couple more details (Score:5, Informative)

    by j_snare (220372) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:13AM (#24333275)

    I saw another article that linked to this one http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_9985333 [denverpost.com] that had a couple of other details.

    It sounds like they weren't just a big happy family...

  • Very typical psychopath (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blind biker (1066130) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:13AM (#24333281) Journal

    Doesn't care about anyone (millions of people inconvenienced by his spam), doesn't have a conscience and leaves a trail of misery and destruction behind.

    Psychopaths are very charming but still, girls, try not to marry one.

  • SpamAssassin

  • Damn... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stanislav_J (947290) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:14AM (#24333307)

    Good riddance to him. But how sad for his family. Why do assholes like this feel the need to take others along with them when they decide to check out? It's times like this when I'm sorry to be an atheist -- I want to believe that he's burning in Hell. Mere nonexistence is not a sufficient punishment for him.

    So much for spammers being "non-violent" criminals...

  • TGIF (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wiarumas (919682) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:19AM (#24333389)
    ...and it was such a pleasant Friday morning until I heard this news.

    I don't know about the rest of you, but I would be willing to take a lifetime of spam to spare the life of his wife and daughter. The positive news of the story (the spam king is gone for good) pales in the shadow of this tragedy.

  • Suicide (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caffiend666 (598633) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:20AM (#24333419) Homepage
    Suicide is the ultimate statement of self-empowerment and control. We now know for sure, this man was unconcerned about disrupting countless lives, and now even destroying them; for his own sense of peace, prosperity, and control. What he feared most was being out of control of his own life, and didn't care about the lives of others. A person unconcerned about disrupting millions of lives for five seconds at a time, could not be bothered to have his interrupted for a few months. Poetic in a monstrous pig way.

    • Re:Woo! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2008, @08:09AM (#24333209)

      Celebrating someone killing their family. Fuck you.

      • Re:Jackass (Score:5, Insightful)

        by R2.0 (532027) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:19AM (#24333399)

        "He also didn't deserve death for what he did; the jail time and fines/restitution was plenty."

        Don't you mean his FAMILY didn't deserve death? Because whether or not he deserved it is moot - he did it to himself.

        • Re:Jackass (Score:5, Insightful)

          by dreamchaser (49529) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:25AM (#24333511) Homepage Journal

          I know he did, but what I meant was even his death isn't something to be celebrated. The man was obviously deeply disturbed. Implying that someone like him should die (and that implication has been made many times here on /.) is just whacked.

    • Re:Coward. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bastard of Subhumani (827601) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:15AM (#24333325) Journal

      You're just jealous because he went one better than you. Right, Hans?

    • Re:Coward. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2008, @08:22AM (#24333453)

      As an atheist, it does make me wish there really was a hell for guys like this.

      The christians have it so easy sometimes :)

        • Re:Coward. (Score:5, Funny)

          by bsDaemon (87307) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:27AM (#24333567) Homepage

          I always say that I'd like to meet the Atheist who doesn't say "god damn it" or "go to hell," and he lesbian that doesn't use a dildo... but they both seem to be very elusive specimens.

          • The right metaphor for the right time (Score:5, Funny)

            by Moraelin (679338) on Friday July 25 2008, @09:01AM (#24334171) Journal

            Well, "Flying Spaghetti Monster damn it!" doesn't really roll off the tongue that well, plus he's not as much into fire and damnation. So, you know, it would end up a bit on par with, "Dear Enemy, I curse you and hope something slightly unpleasant happens to you. Like an onion falling on your head."

            And the Invisible Pink Unicorn is too cute to be taken seriously when it comes to damning, so that one's out of the question too.

            Tooth fairy? I suppose she could get scary if you speak with your head under your pillow, but a damnation that depends on that is kinda unreliable.

            Santa Claus? What's he going to do if he damns you? Bring you a lump of coal? With the prices of energy lately, being damned by Santa might actually be a blessing these days, if you know what I mean.

            So, you know, as non-existent personifications go, the Christian god wins hands down. Now _that_ guy can damn properly. It still doesn't mean we _believe_ in him, but he's the right non-existent guy for the job.

        • Re:Coward. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DustyShadow (691635) on Friday July 25 2008, @08:37AM (#24333759) Homepage
          But I bet you never say "I wish there was a heaven for that guy" when someone dies in a really heroic act.

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